May 16, 2017

Date of the publication of the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh

The subject you had raised with regard to the date of the
publication of the writings of Bahá’u’lláh is interesting as it is important… The
earliest published writings of Bahá’u’lláh date from the nineties of the last
century. Over forty years ago the Aqdas, a volume of general Tablets including
Tarazát, Ishráqát, and others were published in Ishqábád (Russia) and Bombay
respectively and copies of these though rare are still procurable.
Simultaneously with these, if not earlier, some of the writings of Bahá’u’lláh
were published by the Oriental Department of the Imperial Russian University at
St. Petersburgh under the supervision of its director Baron Rosen (and more
particulars about these could be found in the books of E. G. Browne) and these
of course are not undated like some of those published in Bombay.

The main bulk of the writings of Bahá’u’lláh however are to
be found in manuscript form written by noted scribes after the fashion of
orientals. These scribes did not leave all their manuscripts undated and Jinábí
Zain, a very noted Bahá’í scribe, always dated his copies of the writings of
Bahá’u’lláh at the end of the volume in what E. G. Browne calls ‘colophenes’
and the description of some of these colophenes could be found in the works of
the Cambridge Professor.

The son of the above-mentioned scribe is still living in
Haifa and does very much the same work as his father. He claims that as early
as 1868 his father used to write copies of the Íqán for the Bahá’ís in Persia
as a source of livelihood, and that after 1885 when he went to Akká to join
Bahá’u’lláh’s party his entire work and time was devoted to copying the sacred
writings for sale among Bahá’ís. These copies are to be found all throughout
the East and are almost invariably dated.

- Shoghi Effendi (From a letter dated
9 February 1930 written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual believer;
‘Unfolding Destiny’)